Thirteen

For a few days we stay at the service station, but the food there soon dries up and we move on, heading twenty miles down the motorway to the next rest stop. Here there is more food, more water. Searching around the back I find a length of hosepipe and use it to siphon fuel out of some of the abandoned trucks in the car park. I’ve seen the way it’s done in films before, and even though I get a mouthful of petrol the first time I try, it works.

I try not to think about the fact that Lisa is pregnant. If I do it makes me think about Sharon and the kids we’ll never have, and how she’s dead and then I feel like there’s a big, black pit opening underneath me. I concentrate on Lisa instead. Have to keep her safe. That’s what matters now.

We spend a few nights at that service station before we move on. We wash in puddle water and I see for the first time that Lisa’s hair is dark brown in colour. We find new clothes as well, raiding the lockers in the employees lounge. It is awkward, pawing through dead people’s possessions but, I suppose, our need is greater than theirs.

At night we can see the distant glows of city-size fires, burning on the horizon. During the day, smoke drifts overhead. Though we both check the sky frequently, and keep a look out as we drive, we do not see a single Creature. Maybe, I think, with a sick lurch of disgust, they stay within the city limits, where they can feed on the dead.

Once we’ve used up all the edible food that remains at that station we move on again. And it carries on, almost like a routine, hopping nomadically from one service station to another. This continues for a month or more. We get an A to Z mapbook from one of the stations and plot out a route, highlighting an endless series of service stations to visit. It is as much of a plan as either of us have, and it is fine.

Daylight hours are spent crawling down derelict motorways where deer graze on the verge and rabbits hop out of the road at the sound of our approach. Foxes and badgers scavenge in service station car parks. Birds make their nests in the backs of cars.

A month passes, then two, then three. The world settles into its newfound silence. Lisa fattens up, her stomach pushing out into a pregnant bump. We travel on, the two of us.

I begin to think that maybe, just maybe, things will be okay.